LAKEPORT — Lakeport Fire District Director Bill Whipple has announced he will step down from his position on the board after decades of work with the district, and in the wake of a budget shortfall that ended in firefighter layoffs.

“With everything going on,” Whipple said, “it felt like a good time.” However, Whipple added that he was not motivated entirely by the recent financial trouble in the district. “I’ve been here 32 years,” saying it felt like the right time to retire. Whipple expressed excitement for a new board member to take his place, bringing what he hoped would be “new energy” to the district.

courtesy photo

Bill Whipple

Fire Chief Doug Hutchison said Wednesday of Whipple that he would be “sorry to see him go. He’s been around forever, he’s always been a good, steady, calm voice on the board.”

Whipple moved to Lake County in 1971, according to his LFD bio. He joined LFD in 1972, volunteering as a captain until 1992. In 1988 he was named fireman of the year. Whipple became a district commissioner (now director) in 2006.

Two LFD board positions are officially up for reappointment in Jan. 2019, up from just one following a last-minute overhaul of the appointment procedure for directors of the district. After District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown raised concerns about the existing procedure in a board of supervisors meeting, County Counsel Anita Grant and fire district legal counsel Mark Velasquez, among others, conferred with Lakeport and County officials to draft a new procedure.

Now, the City of Lakeport will have the authority to appoint two directors to seats representing the city, and the Board of Supervisors of Lake County will appoint three directors to seats representing unincorporated areas of the fire district.

In Jan. 2019, the City and the County will each appoint one director. As former director Gerry Mills stepped down earlier this year, Whipple’s planned retirement makes it clear that Directors John Whitehead, Randy Williams and Don Davidson will stay on with the district through at least Jan. 2020, when their seats will be up for reappointment.

Gary Hill is the governing-board recommended candidate for the seat to be appointed by the County, but the public has yet to be recruited to apply for the position. District 4 Supervisor Tina Scott said that she had hoped to get the process moving more quickly, but had been “caught off guard” by Brown’s request for revision to the appointment procedure.

In Lakeport, the window for applications closed Wednesday evening. By press time, the City could not comment on how many applications had been received.

According to Velasquez, District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele has directed County staff to reach out to the fire district about the idea of electing directors to the board as other local fire districts do, rather than appointing them.

Ballot measure considerations

Also Tuesday, the board discussed its position on a planned ballot measure which would increase the special tax for the fire district in order to fill serious finance gaps. Consensus among the directors and Chief Hutchison has been to draft a ballot measure that will move away from a unit-of-benefit tax rate system to a more easily understandable one.

Velasquez said Tuesday of the ballot drafting process that the timeline is “pretty compressed,” as it requires polling of residents to be done following the 2018 holidays, and to get a ballot out by May 2019.

“By early February it’s all going to come at you to decide whether to call the election or not,” Velasquez told the board.

Hutchison said that the recent success of the “Measure L” tax hike for South Lake County Fire Protection District had not affected his ideas of what a good tax measure for LFD would look like, noting that the needs of LFD are different than those of South Lake County.

“We’re not going to up (the tax) just because they won,” he said.

The ballot measure will seek to repeal the current system of taxation for the district, Hutchison said, by bringing the entire district under one tax. Currently two taxes are in place—one each for those parts of the district within the Lakeport city limits and for the unincorporated areas.